Saturday, December 30, 2017

There were a few New Years Eve shows at MLG and a few on New Years Day.

I would take this one from Dec 31 1959. Whipper Watson and Ilio Dipaolo finally beat Gene Kiniski and Don Leo Jonathon for the Canadian Open Tag Title. Tunney had the main event go on at 9pm and the midgets after that to enable people to move to their parties around town if desired.

Besides the main event stars good chance to see a young Don Jardine (aka The Spoiler), Sam Steamboat, Pat Flanagan and Tim Geohagen.

Tuesday, December 12, 2017

It's often hard to distinguish what was real and what wasn't back in the day. Even 'official' announcements were mostly just pro wrestling fun, most of them anyways , but not always.

So its summer 1979, Dino Bravo is at the height of his popularity here, proving to be a great Canadian champ and holding it most of the time since it was created for him in late 1978.

He was warring with the likes of Greg Valentine, Ric Flair, and even AWA champ Nick Bockwinkel as well as defending the title down south as we looked at in a previous blog. He was teaming occasionally with WWF champ Bob Backlund, and the fans were solidly behind him.

Suddenly he disappeared. He was scheduled to face Ken Patera on Aug 19 but never showed. Tunney saved the day by getting Backlund to come in on short notice to offer his title up to Patera instead. The fans were disappointed but not that much. Tunney however may have felt differently. Frank or nephew Jack, by this point likely running the day to day of the office.

It was announced that Bravo had suffered an injury and thus was unable to appear. A couple of weeks later a tidbit said the injury would sideline him for a year and they would need to hold a tournament to decide a new champ.

Dewey Robertson ended up beating Valentine in the tourny final to become the new champ and the show marched on.

Fast forward to April 1980. The AWA was coming into Ottawa Ontario to try a show. Ottawa, once a hotbed of wrestling action had been neglected by both Tunney (who had ran it years before) and the Quebec based promotions who frequented the area in the 1970's.

The AWA is very confused !

Bravo, now wrestling regularly for the AWA and embroiled in a big feud with big Crusher Blackwell was scheduled to be the headline bout for the AWA debut in Ottawa on Apr 13.

A promo on the AWA tv show we got here actually had Gene Okerlund interviewing Blackwell in front of a sign that said 'Maple Leaf Gardens'. Oops. actually Ottawa Civic Auditorium.

Funny thing is Tunney DID have an Apr 13 show at MLG. Wonder what happened there? The AWA card was actually set for Apr 30.

At any rate Bravo appeared in Ottawa to face Blackwell and was told he could not wrestle due to a suspension in Ontario. Blackwell faced Johnny War Eagle instead.

The 'official story' as it was reported in a newspaper was that 'Bravo had originally been suspended by Ontario Athletic Commission Chairman Jim Vipond for being an 'immature and irresponsible person' after no showing for Tunney'.

Vipond was the real deal, he was the guy who made a lot of trouble for Dave 'Wildman' McKigney here and the ruling would appear to have been official.

Was it? appears so

A quote by Tunney in the same article said that he 'had no concerns if he's (Bravo) allowed to wrestle in Ontario again, but he'll never wrestle for me again.' Of course Bravo would return for Tunney in 1982.

The ban was lifted and Bravo showed up in Ottawa for the next card to wrestle Blackwell. The bit at right says about 7,000 expected. They would draw about 5-7'000 over the series of shows spaced out over several months.

That would be it for the AWA in Ottawa....however Tunney must have been keeping a close eye and in 1981 while Mosca was champ he went back in for several shows through 81-82 that did about the same numbers.

At that time Tunney had gone back to a circuit and was running Kingston the day before so Ottawa wasn't a big stretch as compared to the AWA coming in from Minneapolis, or at least Winnipeg.

Bravo returned to Toronto in Jan 1982 to face Frankie Laine and got a huge round of applause from the fans. He returned for the Cadillac Tourny a couple months later and that was it for him during the NWA era.

Scientifically speaking for main events you would have to consider factors such as Mosca being a local guy while Flair was defending his NWA belt around the world for many of these years, or that Backlund & Race would rank high as they came in as World Champs and be at the top of the cards but.... if we were to just add those 2 tallies together

Saturday, December 2, 2017

A while back we spoke with MLG photographer Roger Baker about the then upcoming documentary on Sweet Daddy Siki. The doc was shown in Canada on the Doc Channel some months back.MLW Blog - Roger talks Siki

I enjoyed it, It was well done overall. There were relatively few factual errors and was better researched than most anything else I have ever seen on Pro Wrestling, which usually gets the gloss over approach.

It was interesting to hear Siki tell his own story, of his life beyond pro wrestling and the battles he faced. In that context it made for a very enlightening piece, quite emotional coming from his own voice.

At one point Siki tells of being underpaid by Frank Tunney in relation to other stars.
That's that first time I ever heard or read that about Tunney who has long had a reputation of being one of the more honest and well paying promoters.

From numbers I have seen he paid his main event stars huge money for the day, at least back in the 50's and 60's.

Siki was a star in the 60's but also worked a lot here in the 1970's. In the 60's while he had a short time on top he was more like a level B star, occasional mains but mostly in the top 3-4 bouts of the 6-7 bout cards. In the 1970's he was lower on the cards as he got older and worked back to enhancement type level.

It wasn't clear what era he was referring to, or who he was comparing to, guys like Brower, Whip, Tiger Jeet, Sheik etc would have all been above him on pay scale while others like Jim Hady, Ilio DiPaulo, Billy Red etc would have been closer in stature.

I'm not sure if Tunney paid as to the level of the bout on the card as other promoters did, from what I have seen he split a portion of the gate with the main eventers and then semi was just below. The others on the card may have been graded as they often did in other promotions.

At any rate an interesting comment, would be good to have that expanded to further our knowledge of the inner workings of the promotion.

Another cool moment for me was when they showed a photo of Oshawa promoter Pat Milosh presenting Siki with a tournament trophy after Siki had won Oshawa's 2nd annual Wrestling Tournament in August 1966

Photo is at right, excuse quality I took a photo of the tv , if anyone has this photo please send me !

Whats interesting is that after Siki had won his 3rd bout of the evening -first Mr X(?) then The Beast (Yachetti)- against Hans Schmidt to claim the tourny win, the evil Schmidt promptly smashed the trophy in the middle of the ring as Siki was being presented by Milosh.

They did that a lot in those days, both the Calvert and George Richards trophys were destroyed at MLG, and it happened all over the wrestling world. Good for the trophy shops, not so good for the sponsors or winners.

The photo though looks like it was taken backstage, How did they know Siki was going to win (lol)

If you get the chance to see the doc you won't be disappointed. In the showing I saw the background music was mixed too loud, hopefully they fix that for future airings, still a very good look at a decent guy who overcame a lot to become one of the most recognised names and faces in the history of pro wrestling, here and elsewhere.